the people you meet the things are also people
by Significant Owl
Summary: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has something to say on the subject of chance meetings. [Nine, Rose, Ford, Arthur]
1. Chapter 1

_the people you meet (the things are also people)_

i. _hello my name is_

The shop was busy, crowded with blue bodies, fluttering wings, and the occasional tentacle. It was an odd place to find some of the best tea in the galaxy for sale, but sentient life-forms like what they like, hue and appendages notwithstanding, and Rose Tyler had recovered from her initial surprise fairly quickly and got busy with her own shopping.

The only other human in the shop was having a much more difficult time. His friend - who was, frightening thought, the only source of security and constancy in this human's life (and who by inductive reasoning it can be concluded must be an alien, thanks to the words 'only other' in the previous sentence; however, no conclusions can be drawn about this alien's appearance just yet) - this friend had buggered off, and while the human currently in question could understand every spoken word in the room thanks to a fish in his ear, he couldn't make heads nor tails of the signs on the shelves or the labels on the packages.

He was, in a word, vexed.

"Hello," he called up to the creature stocking a shelf four feet over his head. "Hello, can you help me, please? Only there don't seem to be any ladders, and I haven't wings, or tentacle extensions, and, come to that, no bloody idea where the tea is."

The employee fluttered down. It was wearing something like a boiler suit, with a badge pinned to its chest that probably proclaimed its willingness and dedication to providing quality consumable products at reasonable prices, but just served to make this human more disturbed, since he couldn't read it.

"Third aisle, fifth shelf, enjoy the slaking of your thirst and have a nice day!"

"Thanks," he said, and struck out purposefully across the shop.

There was no tea on the third aisle, fifth shelf. In fact, there was no anything at all, unless of course it was invisible. The human felt a bit proud of himself for thinking of this possibility - there was a time, he knew, when it never would have crossed his mind - and he waved his hands about in the emptiness of the shelf.

"Blast," he said, and, feeling this wasn't quite strong enough, added, "and botheration."

He headed toward the front counter. Maybe they had some in the back. It was just too much to think that he'd got this close to tea, real, precious tea, only to find it out of stock.

Turning away from the till was a man in a black leather jacket, a clear bag in his arms; when he got closer, our human could see that the bag was filled to the brim with little boxes. Little boxes that looked suspiciously like the sort of boxes tea might come in.

"I say," he directed at the alien behind the counter, "there didn't seem to be any tea on the shelf. That man didn't just buy it all, did he? Is there more in your storeroom?"

The creature regretted that it could not help him, and tried to interest him in the shop's selection of coffees.

"No, sir would _not_ be interested, and frankly sir doesn't care what mountain your beans are grown on the leeward slopes of, or how carefully they are harvested! Now, listen. How could you let that man buy every last box of tea? It's not fair to the other customers! Some of whom haven't had tea since their planet was destroyed!"

The response the human received threatened to lead to nasty consequences of the brain aneurysm variety. "Unlimited credit?!" he shouted, turning an interesting (and more aesthetically pleasing, to the mind of the employee behind the counter) shade of purple. "How - I mean -"

Giving up, he set off for the door at a run. It wasn't a very dignified run, and it didn't even cover a lot of ground, because about three seconds later he collided with a girl on her way to the till. "Oh, hell," he said, watching the tea escape out the door in the arms of the man in the black jacket. He retrieved his manners. "I'm sorry, you're not hurt, are you?"

"No, I'm fine," she said, with a nice, wide smile. "Didn't even drop my basket."

"Good," he said, "now if you'll excuse me, I must dash, I can't let that man get away!"

He dashed.

"That man? Hang on, are you after the Doctor?"

He stumbled to a halt. "I don't know," he said, turning to the girl, who had caught him up already. "Does the Doctor dress like an aging rock star and have trouble remembering he's not the most important person in the universe?"

She grinned. "Yes and yes." And this would be a fitting time to note that the male human was dressed in pyjamas and a dressing-gown; the girl's eyes flitted over him worriedly. "Are you in some kind of trouble? Is that why you need the Doctor?"

A great deal of feeling went into the next five words. "He's got all the _tea_."

"Oh, I _see_." The girl covered her mouth with her hand, clearly unable to speak, which was interpreted as a demonstration of her own shock and horror at the situation. Which is the sort of thing that has led to male humans being short-listed for the title of Most Unintuitive Beings In All Time And Space.

Feeling that a few niceties had been skimped on (and that, since the tea-scoundrel was probably some distance away by this point, it would be best to observe as many as possible with this girl who seemed to know him), the human stuck out his hand. "Arthur Dent. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Rose Tyler," she said, shaking it, "back at you. Listen, I'll be meeting up with the Doctor in a bit, come along if you like. Just let me pay for this -" She hefted her basket.

"Thank you, Miss Tyler -"

"Rose."

"- Rose, I would like that very much. Do you think it likely he and I might come to some sort of agreement?"

"Don't know," she said, heading for the till. "Sort of interested to see how it goes, myself." "I can pay," Arthur said, patting his pocket.

"Yeah, he's not really one for money."

Arthur frowned. Right. Unlimited credit. "Then. . . now, wait. Why did he leave you to buy this stuff on your own, if you're together?" Really, he thought, this Doctor's rudeness knew no bounds. Unlimited credit, and this young girl had to pay for her own few groceries?

"I sent him on ahead. Had a few things to pick up, personal, you know," Arthur blushed, suddenly looking everywhere but at the counter and the small tube-like items the clerk was ringing up, "and he goes on about species enough as it bloody is, I just wasn't in the mood for another round."

"Ah," Arthur said, weakly, "right. Of course."

A few moments later, the shop was free of humans, Arthur and Rose being outside in the sunshine.

Down the road was another shop, one specialising in spaceship parts and miscellaneous tech, all used (Why Buy New When Our Parts Are Already Broken In?) and all discounted. It was just the sort of place that could be guaranteed to draw in the Doctor and Arthur's friend like tiny bits of iron to an immensely large magnet.

The Doctor was rifling through a bin filled with tools (Your Choice, Just Three Altairian Dollars!), a man on a mission. He thought he'd glimpsed a master drone clamp underneath all the space junk in the bin, and he could do with another one of those. . . .

(Later on, after the explosion threw him backwards, knocked over the entire row of bins and mixed all their contents together, the Doctor would feel quite certain that it hadn't been a master drone clamp at all, but some sort of hair-styling aid.)

Three bins down, Arthur's friend was oohing over a Sub-Etha hyper-signal-enhancer in really top condition - and priced for only twelve Altairian dollars! It was the sort of deal the phrase 'too good to be true' was invented for, because it was. So Arthur's friend, having kept his scepticism decently healthy over the years through regular exercise, pulled his Sens-O-Matic from his leather satchel and plugged the enhancer into it. Just to see.

And what he saw was mostly blinding light, as the blast sent him careening down the aisle. When he landed, it was a very solid, very uncomfortable sort of landing, but that wasn't what caused him to lose consciousness.

Arthur and Rose felt the pavement tremble under their feet and heard a very loud boom. "The Doctor!" Rose said, and then she was running towards the sound, Arthur struggling to keep up and having panicky thoughts about charred and blackened tea-leaves.

It has been said that in moments of great stress (and sudden explosions in your immediate vicinity count as great stress, no matter how many you've been involved with in your day), every life form gives out a subliminal signal communicating exactly how far that being is from the place of his birth.

When a birth-world has burned into nothingness, and there is some debate over whether thanks to the nature of its destruction it can be said to have ever actually existed within Time at all, well, what you've got there is a mighty strong signal.

And when both the beings involved in receiving and transmitting such a signal are to some degree or another telepathic, you begin to see why phrases like 'blow your mind' were invented.

Arthur and Rose arrived in the shop to find the shopkeeper waving two tentacles and yelling about compensation, one corner of the shop looking like a bomb had gone off (which it effectively had), the Doctor propping up a figure on the floor, and Arthur's friend playing the role of the figure on the floor.

"Bloody hell!" Arthur said. Not eloquent, but heartfelt. "Ford, man, are you all right?"

Ford Prefect (for Arthur's friend had chosen to call himself after an automobile fifteen or so relative years ago, and it had stuck), blinked back into awareness, one hand scrabbling in his bag. "I'm fine," he said, pulling out a towel and dragging it across his face. He sat all the way up and twisted round to stare at the Doctor. "But _you_," Ford said.

And Rose was at the Doctor's side in a instant, crouching, one hand on his shoulder and the other on his knee; and vague thoughts that Arthur hadn't even realised had been stirring suddenly stopped, lay down, and died.

"What _about_ him?" Rose demanded. Her eyes searched the Doctor up and down. "Are you all right? What did you _do_?"

"Oh, I like that," the Doctor said, springing to his feet and pulling Rose up with him. "Has to be something I did. Can't have been that one's fault."

"Was it?"

"Yes!" The Doctor turned and pointed at the shopkeeper. "So you can stop waving those at me, there's a nice fellow, and Rose, if you're done, we can go back to the TARDIS."

The next three minutes went something like this:

Rose said, "Actually -"

Ford said, to the alien approaching him, "Now, I hate to have to point this out, but it was your merchandise that caused -"

The shopkeeper shot out a tentacle, wrapped it around Ford's waist, and dragged him across the shop, holding him pointedly face-to-face with a sign;

Ford, being rather more skilled at languages than Arthur, had no trouble reading it aloud, and therefore everyone learned that The Management Is Never Responsible For Anything, Anything At All;

The Doctor unearthed his shopping bag from a pile of debris, said, "Come on, Rose," and headed out the door;

Arthur let out a mighty sigh of relief as the bag emerged intact;

Rose said to Arthur, "Blue box, down the street, can't miss it," and followed the Doctor out;

Ford passed out again, or pretended to, going limp in the shopowner's tentacle-grip;

Arthur indignantly demanded Ford's release, and when his friend hit the ground with a thump and a tentacle was menacingly extended in his own direction, sighed another sort of sigh, and set to doing what space travel seemed to be mostly about - clearing up other people's messes.

Fairly busy, then, as minutes go.

ii. _getting to know you_

When the knock came, Rose said, "Company!" and flung open the door.

"Company?" The Doctor was on the floor, untangling a mass of wires. "Who - _these_ two, Rose? Really?" He dropped the wires and joined Rose, who was ushering their guests into the TARDIS. "Not exactly up to your usual standard, are they?"

Rose huffed a bit, because she knew she was being called shallow. Arthur would have huffed, because he would have correctly suspected a slight, but he was far too fixated on the dear familiar shape of this blue box to do much of anything. His brain hadn't even made room for the whole 'inside is bigger than the outside' business. And Ford, who might not have been bothered about huffing anyway, didn't huff because he was too busy staring round and trying not to dribble.

"This is Arthur Dent," Rose said. "Arthur Dent, and -" she looked to Arthur for help in identifying his companion. She didn't get any.

"You're _English_," Arthur said.

"Yep," Rose said cheerfully. "You too, then? I wondered, but," she shot the Doctor a look, "I've learned you can't tell by accent. Or what caffeinated beverages someone's addicted to."

Arthur nodded, because of course he knew that about accents as well. It had caused him some confusion at first - for a while he'd been convinced that space was full of people from the Home Counties - but now he understood it as a side-effect of having things translated directly into your brain.

"And human?" he clarified.

"Well, yeah," Rose said.

Arthur felt the urge to do something that he couldn't recall having felt the urge to do before: throw his arms around a complete stranger.

It probably goes without saying that he got past it.

In the meantime, Ford re-discovered speech. "Is this ship what I think it is?" he breathed.

"That depends," the Doctor said, crossing his arms and taking a step forward. "What do you think it is?"

Rose suspected that Arthur's chances of getting so much as a tea-leaf out of the Doctor depended on his friend's answer to that question. If he didn't think it was a TARDIS, he'd better think it was some other kind of ship that the Doctor would consider bloody amazing.

"A TARDIS," Ford said, in a voice of awe.

"Yep!" The Doctor beamed. "Want to look round the controls?"

Ford nodded enthusiastically.

Rose glanced around. The Doctor was in full show-off mode, and therefore, pretty much at his happiest. Arthur's friend looked like he might just pass out again from over-excitement. And Arthur - well, he was smiling, and even though she hadn't known him long Rose had got the impression he didn't do a whole hell of a lot of that.

And who had brought all these happy people together? Her, that's who.

Rose Tyler beamed a bit herself.

The aliens were talking applied temporal mechanics. Ford was trying to be entirely cool about things, but quite frankly, he was failing. He was inside a TARDIS. He was inside a _TARDIS_. It was, for purposes of analogy, like an automobile enthusiast getting a poke under the bonnet of a Model T after they'd all supposedly been destroyed in some sort of mysterious yet conclusively and irreversibly final event.

Nobody did time travel like the Time Lords, nobody. They didn't just move through it, they _owned_ it - these people looked at stars and said, oh how nice, let's just go collapse one of those and harness it up, shall we?

At least, they had done. When they'd existed. If they'd existed. And, all right, up until about ten minutes ago, Ford would have dismissed the Time Lord tale as pure 'once upon a time' nonsense - but what he was seeing inside this ship matched every story he'd ever heard about a TARDIS. And you didn't make your way in this galaxy by ignoring what was right in front of your face. Not if you wanted to keep your nose.

The Doctor walked around the center console, pointing things out. "Fluid links. . ."

"Right, fluid links," Ford said, as if he'd seen it all a thousand times before.

"Gravity beam controls. . ."

"Gravity beam, yeah."

"Antiflux delimiters. . ."

"Antiflux limit-"

"_De_limiters."

"Right, yeah, antiflux delimiters."

So this Doctor, then, was either one of the luckiest froods to ever stumble across an abandoned spaceship. . . or he was an actual living, breathing, non-extinct Time Lord.

And after what it had been through in that shop, Ford's head was willing to bet on the latter. Easy.

The humans were talking Earth. Arthur, about the West Country; about little villages and rolling fields and that noise cows make when you're trying to sleep. Rose, about south London; about getting up, taking the bus to work, and taking it home again; about telly, going to bed, getting up and going to work again.

Arthur had hated city life, but listening to Rose, it didn't sound half bad.

He was trying very hard not to ask the Big Questions: Where had Rose been when the Vogons blasted their planet apart? How had she got away? Had this Doctor shoved her into his bizarrely large police box in the nick of time? It would be the height of bad manners to bring up what had to have been the most distressing day in this girl's life. Or to suddenly spring it on her if by some chance she didn't already know.

So Arthur was trying his best to keep planetary destruction off the conversational table. He was also, whether he realised it or not, doing a fair amount of sighing and looking desperately nostalgic - at the moment, he was doing both whilst speaking of the smell a hot summer day brought through the windows of a house that stood beside a cow pasture.

"You really miss Earth, don't you?" Rose asked.

Arthur drew himself up a bit. "Yes, well. You know. Home, and all that."

Rose reached in her pocket and pulled out her phone. "Want to ring someone?"

He stared. "How?"

She shrugged. "The Doctor. Go on, anyone, anywhere, any time."

"What, in the past?"

Rose smiled, encouraging a slow child. "Yeah."

"You mean, before. . ." She nodded, and Arthur absolutely couldn't believe it. He could phone up his mother, his sister? Hear their voices again? Arthur started to reach for her tiny little phone, then pulled his hand back. No. There was no point. It wouldn't change anything.

Unless. . . he was beginning to have an idea. It was the sort of idea that seemed perfectly possible in a universe where nuclear missiles turned into whales and bowls of petunias. "Rose," he said, "you know how things on Earth. . . end, don't you?"

"Yeah," she said, "I saw it, once."

Arthur pressed on. "Have you ever thought about phoning up anyone to try and stop it? Tell them that the Vogons are coming?"

Rose went very still. "The Vogons?"

"Yes. They were the aliens in those yellow ships."

"Oh right," Rose said. "Erm. What year was it, again?"

"1978."

"Of course, 1978, yeah." Rose slipped the phone back into her pocket. "Oh look," she said, pointing at a distraction which couldn't have been timed any better, "column's moving. That means we're taking off." She grinned. "And you're coming with us."

_Will Ford remain united with his cool, or will he dribble? Will Rose and the Doctor do something about this destruction-of-the-Earth business? And, last but very much not least, will Arthur Dent have a cup of tea? These and other queries may or may not be answered, but you won't know unless you come back for part two._


	2. Chapter 2

iii. _secret secret, I've got a secret_

There are places in the galaxy practically _made_ for clandestine conversations. Dangrabad Beta, for example, where the sandstorms howl and rage for weeks on end, and you can be assured that no-one but you and your fellow conversationalist is bonkers enough to be out-of-doors. (You can also be assured of finding sand everywhere you'd expect, later on, and everywhere you wouldn't. Yes, even there.) Or Squornshellous Gamma, where the native cushions have a memory spanning just five seconds, so any sentence they happen to overhear ends up forgotten before it even reaches the full stop.

The interior of a semi-sentient time-and-space ship that is in constant telepathic contact with her owner/partner/pilot is notably nowhere to be found on a list of such places. But luckily for Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent, the Doctor was far too busy to pay them any mind; he was currently up to his ears in a clandestine conversation of his own.

"He thinks Earth was destroyed in 1978," Rose said. "So we're going to go save it, yeah?"

The Doctor sighed. "Oh, Rose. You didn't tell him. . ."

"No!"

"Had to ask, didn't I?" Rose glared, but the Doctor, who had been glared at by things with a lot more eyes than a female human, kept talking. "So, no nasty paradoxes lurking, good. What does that planet of yours need saving from this time?"

"Vogons, he said."

"Oh, hoo-bloody-ray. The Vogons. Get ready, Rose, for the most excruciatingly mind-numbingly dull bit of planet-saving you'll ever be involved in."

"What, why? What're we going to do?"

"How are you at filling in forms?"

Elsewhere:

"I _said_, he's a _Time Lord_." This time, Ford spoke slowly and enunciated his words very carefully. He was, after all, talking to a human.

"I'm _trying_ to _sleep_." Arthur spoke in much the same manner, curiously enough.

"A Time Lord," Ford repeated, mostly for his own benefit. Out of the Doctor's presence, doubts were sneaking in. Logic and reason, with whom he'd previously been on quite good terms, were callously crashing a party to which they hadn't been invited. Thoughts like, 'Recreational Illusions are bigger on the inside too' and 'just because he says it's a TARDIS doesn't mean it's a TARDIS' were scarfing up bacon-wrapped prawns and cracking open the best booze.

It would have been splendidly affirming if Arthur's immediate response had been something like, 'oh yes, I spotted it as well,' but, Ford reminded himself, he _was_ a product of a civilization that had actually coined - and worse, held onto - a phrase as staggeringly demented as 'ignorance is bliss.'

"A Time Lord? Good, he can give me the last quarter of an hour back," Arthur said. He settled a pillow over his face with some emphasis.

Ford flicked it away, and proceeded to do what he often did in situations like this. It was partly a matter of authorial pride, partly an issue of company loyalty, and partly a result of the Imperial Galactic Government's successful Wellness for Everything That Moves! campaign (Ford was well aware of how dangerous constantly explaining things to Arthur might be for his blood pressure). He had a hunt-round in his satchel, then dropped an open electronic book squarely onto Arthur's blanket-covered middle.

It lay there, rising and falling with disinterested human breath after disinterested human breath.

Hissing between his teeth, Ford took it back, typed in two words, and pressed a red button. He then held the book in the vicinity of Arthur's ear, keeping his finger on a button marked with a little picture of a megaphone.

Some information was lost during the yelling that followed (which started out as wordless noise and shifted into some of the gentlest profanity to be found in the _Ultra-Complete Maximegalon Dictionary of Every Language Ever_, words which indeed on many progressive planets would be deemed suitable for the ears of infants and grandmothers alike), so Ford repeated the process.

_"Time Lords,_" said the book, in tones which were deep, important, and on the awed side. _"A race of near-immortal and near-omnipotent beings, who, if they did indeed exist, can be considered a case study for the importance of qualifying words such as 'near;' and if they didn't, are a well-developed figment of the galactic imagination. Whichever, you won't run into one the next time you go down the shops._

_"Time Lords may or may not have lived on the planet Gallifrey, which may or may not have been located at the galactic coordinates of 1001100 by 02. . . ."_

"You see?" Ford asked. He closed the book with a click.

Arthur didn't. However, as most of his attention was focused on breathing in a deep, relaxing manner and ignoring the existence of both Ford and Ford's bloody book, no clarification was requested.

"Just imagine it, being the one to re-write that article," Ford said.

"What, to strike through all the mays and may nots?" said Arthur, proving he would win no major awards for either deep breathing or ignoring.

Ford Prefect rarely detected sarcasm, since they didn't have it where he came from. Arthur Dent often fell back on sarcasm when he was worried, confused, upset, puzzled, distressed, and a host of similar adjectives which, particularly since he'd been forced to take up space travel, pertained to him with depressing frequency. Their continued friendship proved that whichever Earthman had first applied physics to social philosophy with the words 'opposites attract' had significantly fewer flies on him than that 'ignorance is bliss' fellow.

"Exactly," Ford said.

"And the bit about not seeing them down the shops?"

"To tell the galaxy what they look like, how they dress, what they eat, what they do of an evening. . ." Ford was on a roll. "That kind of scoop could be just the thing for someone's career - there could be a pay rise in it, and possibly an all-expenses-paid mini-break at a resort on Eroticon Six. . . ."

"Just imagine it, him finding out what you're up to, then tossing us out into the vacuum of space. . . Which, by the way, I've decided is _not_ among the experiences I enjoy."

Lost in a personal vision of the happenings of an excitingly mature nature waiting on Eroticon Six, Ford offered no response to these dark mutterings.

"Where is this Time Lord taking us?" Arthur asked, ramping his volume up a notch. "If my asking doesn't put you out?"

Ford gave Arthur one of his good, long stares, the sort that had been known to make many a human's train of thought derail quietly and without fuss, crowded emergency rooms, or press conferences by rail authorities. Unfortunately for his purposes, Arthur still had his eyes contrarily closed.

"Where is he taking us?" Arthur repeated. "Back to Beeblebrox? Or did you choose some lovely planet for us to stop off and probably get killed on?"

"Ah," said Ford.

"Erm," said Ford.

"I don't think it works like that," said Ford.

"I don't think I should much mind if we were to never see Beeblebrox again, but I would feel quite rude not saying farewell to Trillian. . . what do you _mean_, it doesn't work like that?"

"Don't worry," Ford said in his best trust-me voice, "when Zaphod comes back to pick us up, the fact that we aren't where he dropped us off won't be any problem. Not for the Heart of Gold."

Arthur gave up his quest for blissful delta sleep and the restorative properties thereof (which the Galactic Government tended to downplay in its attempts to improve the health of its citizens, because it's hard to raise gross global products - and, similarly, the taxes responsible for paying salaries of duly hired government officials - when the populace is asleep all the bloody time). He sat up.

"Ford," Arthur said as sternly as possible, "exactly where are we going?"

iv. _it's five o'clock somewhere_

If anyone had asked (and of course, no-one did), Arthur would have told them that he'd assumed it would be breakfast. That seemed to be the meal to offer after you'd sent people off to a room to, quote, kip down out of the way. And if they'd asked, he would have told them that when humans slept for a while, once they'd finally got rid of their non-question-answering alien so-called friends, they woke up programmed to want very specific things. Things that came from chickens, and pigs, and leafy plant matter. It was biological, and probably highly scientific.

Surely, Arthur thought at the time, surely there would have been tea, if there'd been breakfast.

(Later Arthur would think, in tones of the righteous just, that there would have been a lot less drunkenness and associated unpleasantness if there'd been tea.)

Ford set the tone for the proceedings, opening and closing cabinets til he found a large and dusty bottle of Ol' Janx Spirit. The suspected Time Lord watched this invasion of his kitchen with an expression that might have been sardonic amusement, or might have been the prelude to Arthur and Ford's re-introduction to the cold dead blackness of space. Arthur stood close to Rose, because he thought she seemed the type to raise objections to that sort of thing.

The Doctor's eyes lit upon the bottle, and he grinned a huge, mad, somewhat unsettling grin. "Fantastic!" he proclaimed.

Rose rolled her eyes. "If it's all the same to you lot," she said, "I'll have my dinner _before_ I burn my tastebuds off."

"Sure it won't be an improvement?" the Doctor asked. "Seeing what you've got for us and all?"

"Shut it, you," Rose said, giving him a good bump with her shoulder.

Arthur watched them, trying to work things out. So the Doctor was a member of an almost immortal and omnipotent species that didn't exist, and Rose was one of those people who followed you round a department store because you couldn't be trusted looking through the racks on your own? And together they knocked around the universe in a bizarrely large police box?

_Well_, Arthur thought, feeling a puff of pride at just how much broadening he'd done over the course of all this travel, _well all right, fair enough._

They ate. The aliens talked about the TARDIS, Ford fishing for information like a world-class angler who doesn't want the fish to figure out just how little he knows about, well, whatever fish know about. The Doctor gobbled up every morsel of bait, taking full advantage of the opportunity to expound upon his ship's wonderfulness. At the other end of the table, Arthur was trying to figure out where Rose and the Doctor had got the pie and mash and parsley sauce from, because that planet would be worth a visit; Rose said it was hard to say, but she was very glad he liked it.

When they were finished, Arthur, being both polite and deviously ingratiating, offered to do the washing up. Rose laughed.

"Best thing about living on a space ship," she said, opening a door to reveal stacks of plates and glasses. "The cupboards are sonic dishwashers."

Ford wasted no time on being impressed. "I don't need another glass," he said, waving vaguely toward Rose and her cupboard. He drained his cup of water in one gulp and waved it as well. "This'll do fine."

Alcohol is, of course, the cause of more effects than almost anything else in the universe. On a small, easily-overlooked planet which Arthur Dent held in some regard, a civilization that once spanned two million square miles and five hundred toga-wearing years went to bits because the people who were supposed to be running things found drinking fermented fruit juices and engaging in a variety of moistly interpersonal activities far more interesting than all that governing business. Something quite similar occurred in the Omega Centauri cluster, seventeen thousand light-years away; that empire stretched across three star systems, and their activities had rather different ins and outs, but on the whole your average galactic history student would have a hard time telling the two societies apart on a multiple-guess quiz.

(It can be argued that the activities mentioned in the previous paragraph have propelled along more of history than have fluid spirits; but since so often they really only get going because of alcohol anyway, it's not worth mithering about.)

Ford did the honours for everyone, snapping his towel out of his bag and wrapping it carefully round his hand before pouring out. Arthur assumed this was simply because he was Ford. This was a mistake. If Arthur had known it was a measure taken to keep the skin safe from any contact with the alcohol, as suggested on the friendly little warning label, he probably wouldn't have had as much as he did.

Which was about half a sip: Arthur touched the tip of his tongue to the wicked-looking contents of his glass, coughed, went bug-eyed, and announced that water would do him just fine, thanks. Unless, of course, there happened to be any t. . .

But at that moment Rose tried her own glass, sputtered, flailed, and flushed red up to her hair.

"Could've told you so," the Doctor said, then added something unflattering about apes that reminded Arthur strongly of Beeblebrox.

Rose lifted her chin and shot the Doctor a Look, one with a capital letter. Clearly, she wanted to see him do better.

The Doctor grinned back. Clearly, he could.

And so the aliens began showing the humans how it was done. The first drink was knocked back easily by the suspected Time Lord; his lips pulled back into the barest of grimaces. Ford followed. His shoulders twitched in the tiniest shudder before he put his empty glass back on the table.

"Well aged," Ford said, after a moment.

"Like him, you mean?" Rose said. She pushed back her chair and headed for the door.

Arthur watched her go and wondered if it would be all right to follow her out. Given the choice between sitting round with a couple of drunk aliens or chatting with a nice sympathetic girl from his own planet, well, there _was_ no choice. But she might be headed somewhere that company would not be welcome, like the loo, or where company might be suggestive of things that Arthur actually wouldn't mind suggesting if he thought it wouldn't be hazardous to his health, like her bedroom.

As Rose crossed the room (which was one of the largest kitchens Arthur had ever been in; if he had been more domestically inclined, he would have done some envious slobbering over the yards of cupboards and countertops built in to the curving golden walls), Arthur found himself pondering two very important questions.

One, did alien doctors take oaths not to deliberately harm any other lifeforms?

And two, did the alien with his own flash ship _always_ have to get the girl?

"What, time for _Footballer's Wives_?" the Doctor asked.

"Should've seen him when Tanya swapped the babies and hers got smothered by Amber's dog," Rose commented to the room at large. "Stroppy for _days_, he was." She turned to the Doctor. "No, I'm going to get something to make watching you two slosh yourselves a little less boring."

The something was playing cards, and Rose returned with them a few minutes later. "Here," she said. "Some for you," she dropped one pack in front of the Doctor, giving him a light smack on the head at the same time, "and some for us." She settled down with the other at Arthur's end of the table.

"Don't want to play with me?" the Doctor asked.

"You cheat."

"If using the brain in your head is cheating in _your_ century. . . ."

Rose rolled her eyes and turned her back. "What do you want to play?" she asked Arthur. "I gave him psychic cards, but ours are regular."

"Rummy?" Arthur said. He'd always known where he was with rummy.

"Rummy it is."

When events are related in a narrative fashion, there are always choices to be made. From here, should the focus be Arthur's ten-game winning streak? If so, should his every hand be recounted, and his strategic card-playing decisions? Or the ways in which Rose ensured his success, card by card?

A valid option, but a boring one. Even Arthur, flush in his victory, would agree.

Drunkenness and associated unpleasantness it is.

Because Ford had a great deal of practise at this sort of thing, and because no-one quite knew _exactly_ how the Doctor's physiology worked, including the microscopic alcohol particles zipping around in his bloodstream, it took a lot of drinks. And a lot of time, too, if you can say that time passes when you're hanging out in something known as a vortex of it.

But it did happen, and finally Ford decided that the moment was right. Mostly he decided this because the Doctor was, to his eyes, now manifesting in the form of a large, intense glowworm, radiating black everywhere except his head, which shone a sort of peachish-tan. The fact that the Doctor felt comfortable enough to show himself in what could only be the natural state of all Time Lords struck Ford as encouraging. Nothing about it struck Ford as odd, not one thing, which _could_ just go to show that Ford was a seasoned galactic traveller. . . or more likely, could indicate that the bottle of Janx Spirit had done its work, and could retire peacefully back to its cupboard, content in a job well done.

"'s true you know," Ford said, bobbing his head. "This," he waved an arm expansively, "this is boring. But secrets are interesting, want to tell secrets?"

"Go ahead," the glowworm said, gesturing politely.

"Ah." Ford was more or less blindsided. He pondered. He was meant to be cleverly extracting information, he'd known that a minute ago, but he was also, as has been alluded, very drunk. Searching his soggy, suggestible brain cells, he finally came up with a secret to tell. "Ah!" he said, and this time it was a triumphant ah. "My dad survived the collapse of the Hrung. Only one."

The glowworm was impressed. Ford could tell. He glowed, darkly.

"Doctor, what's a Hr-?" Rose's attention had been captured by the word 'secrets.'

"You're from Betelgeuse Seven?" the Doctor asked.

"Been there?"

"Think so. Very rocky? Lot like a quarry?" Ford nodded. "Yeah," the Doctor said, "think I've been there."

"Zarking Hrung," Ford said, shaking his head. He poured enough liquor in his glass to lay Arthur out for a week, then drank it down.

Arthur's own drink was abandoned, and his jaw had dropped so far it was in danger of disconnecting from his skull. He'd always assumed that Ford was from a really happening sort of planet, kind of like Los Angeles with spaceships. Rocks had not heavily featured in any story he'd ever heard from Ford Prefect or Zaphod Beeblebrox. Granted, Arthur had never listened all that carefully to any story, either. Bypassing tact in favour of clarity, he said, "You grew up in a wasteland?"

"No," Ford said, with an extravagant, tangible patience, "the society of Betelgeuse Five is very advanced. Lightyears ahead of your lot in all respects. Well," he added after some consideration, "ahead of where you were before, you know. . . ." Also zipping past tact, Ford made a popping sound and an exploding sort of gesture.

Arthur frowned. "But you said-"

Ford waved a hand at Rose, and addressed the twinkling Time Lord. "Is yours the same?"

"Rose? No. She's got a sharp little mind." The Doctor's grin was proud, but a careful observer would have noted that it did not reach his eyes.

Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent are not to be confused with careful observers.

"You're lucky she's at this end of the table," Rose said. Not letting indignation get in the way of pride, she sat up a little taller, and said helpfully to Arthur, "His dad moved to Betelgeuse Five before he was born." She turned to Ford. "Have you ever been there?"

He shook his head. "Dead planets give me the creeps."

"Bit depressing, I should imagine," Arthur said. "Seeing your planet like that, just. . . just. . . ."

"Dust and rocks," the Doctor said. And here, a careful observer would have noted that his tone would not have been out of place in a graveyard, and might have wondered if Time Lords had a tendency towards substance-induced melancholy.

Arthur was grateful for the Doctor's sepulchral input, because he was finding it strangely difficult to string words together on his own. He had got used to carrying around a certain level of planet-related (or more accurately, lack-of-planet-related) angst and woe, and knew how to keep his head above it, but he suddenly found himself hit with a wave that would have drowned all but the best surfers.

Seeing as he was surrounded by telepathic aliens with chemically-muzzied brains and serious planetary issues of their own, he was lucky to still be breathing.

There was a long silence, in which some furniture moved, Ford continued to gently hallucinate, and Arthur pulled himself together and realised he was really rather peeved. Not only did Ford not give a toss about the Earth's destruction, he apparently didn't care about the destruction of his own planet either. Arthur decided that this just went to show that there was something deeply flawed at the very center of Ford. He never considered the hypothesis that there was nothing wrong with Ford's center, at least nothing more than usual for your average sentient lifeform, and that perhaps Ford simply had a very thick outer crust.

It was, Arthur further decided, typical. Just typical. Why was it that aliens had no proper feelings? And why had Rose scooted her chair away from his and very close to the Doctor's?

Rose broke the silence. She did it quite suddenly, as if she'd just become aware of a terrible wrong that had to be righted without delay. She did it with exclamation points. "You two haven't seen the swimming baths yet!"

"Well, no, but -" Arthur began.

"You'll love 'em! The water's gorgeous, really perfect."

"No, really, it's not a problem -"

"Oh, you'll be sorry if you don't," Rose said firmly. "Go on, out that door, fourth right, second left, then just past the boot cupboard on the right."

Arthur goggled. Was she going to give him paper? A biro? Anything?

Ford obediently scraped back his chair and wobbled to his feet. "Well, come on, Arthur," he said. Humming what Arthur failed to recognise as a traditional Praxilbetan bathing song, he began weaving a path toward the door.

Arthur looked at Rose. She said, "Go on," again, and made a shooing motion with her hands. Arthur looked at the Doctor, and realised that he really did want to be somewhere else. Anywhere would do.

He hustled out the door, catching Ford up in the corridor just outside. Which was good, because as places to stagger to alone and intoxicated went, bodies of water sludged around at the bottom of the list. Arthur hoped that he was up to an aquatic rescue, should the need arise. They'd be all right, he thought, as long as his feet could touch.

As Arthur Dent has never been known to go in for descriptive flights of fancy or extended metaphors, it will have to be said for him that the Doctor, in the moment that Arthur looked at him, was dark and deep, a bottomless pool; and it will further be observed that Rose, though not of infinite height, has in the past proven herself a very good swimmer.

So they should be all right, too. 

_Will Ford Prefect enjoy an all-expenses-paid mini-break on Eroticon Six? If so, will galactic decency standards allow his adventures there to be recounted? When will this promised unpleasantness occur, and just how unpleasant will it be? Where are our travellers headed, anyway? You've no chance of finding out if you don't come back for part three._


	3. Chapter 3

_v. found out about you_

Look up the word 'sleep' in _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ and you'll find far more than prose related to brain waves and rapid-eye movement. This is because sleep, much like another word beginning with the letter 's', is a subject of great and stirring interest to many inhabitants of the Galaxy. (Interestingly enough, this other word also refers to an activity which according to tradition takes place in a bed, but in actual practise can and does take place just about anywhere.)

Entries for both words are oft-consulted and address many similar concerns, including _How can I fit more of this into my daily routine?, How can I improve the quality of what I'm getting?,_ and _Where can I go on holiday if I want to grab some that's really top-notch?_ (_The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ does suggest that you be prepared to spend more than the usual thirty Altairian dollars a day if the latter is indeed your goal.)

There are, of course, persons to be found on worlds across the Galaxy that appear to have little use for either activity, who tend to refer to them in tones that suggest disinterest or disdain, and in most cases probably prefer the _Encyclopedia Galactica_ to _The Hitchhiker's Guide_ anyway. The rest of the Universe wonders just what the bally hell is wrong with these people, and precisely how they (and in some particularly baffling cases, their entire species) made it through their first really long power cut without topping themselves.

At the moment, Arthur Dent is asleep, and he is enjoying it. He is dreaming happy dreams which, it will be of no surprise to note, are at times dry and leafy, at other times gloriously quenching, and at all times a rich, invigorating brown. Like all moments not spent sitting in church or school-leaving ceremonies, this one will not last. It will end when something yellow and furious bursts into the room where Arthur is sleeping and turns on the light.

Right about -

now.

_"Where's your friend?"_

Arthur blinked and shielded his eyes as the words dripped into his brain like treacle from a particularly angry spoon. "Have you tried his room?" he said finally. "Back out in the corridor, on your left?" Careful of his put-upon irises, Arthur raised the arm resting over his eyes, just enough to peek out. The merciless light-switch-wielding intruder was still there, and demonstrating no signs of _not_ being there at any point in the near future. He decided to be helpful and repeat the most important part of the directions. "Back out in the corridor?"

The intruder - Rose - shook her head. "Yeah, he's not there. Where else?" Spinning round on her heels, she pitched her voice at the walls, loudly enough to make Arthur wince. "Are you hiding in here?"

"If Ford's here, he's been awfully quiet, which seems highly unlikely," Arthur said. He sat up, arranging his blankets with reflexive modesty. Then he remembered that, like the rest of the universe, Rose already seen his pyjamas, and modesty at this stage was a wasted effort. "I suggest you try the bathroom, if you haven't already. After all that drink, he's probably getting better acquainted with the toilet."

"Oh," Rose said, wrinkling up her nose. "No. I haven't. Ew."

Hope flared within Arthur. Surely that was that, then - surely Rose would decide to take whatever-it-was up with Ford at a later date, when there was less risk of smell and stickiness. Surely now she would leave him to sleep in peace, or, no, even better, come over and sit beside him on the bed and talk a bit? They could start with how annoying Ford was - Arthur had plenty to offer on that topic - and move onto other, more congenial subjects. . . .

But Rose, who had seen a great many things which could be described as 'ew' during her travels in time and space, said, "Show me which door?"

Heaving a sigh, which, even though he quite liked Rose, he was careful to make entirely audible, Arthur pushed himself out of bed. So it wasn't just aliens, then. Travelling through space somehow removed the need for sleep from everyone and everything except for him.

Arthur led the way out into the corridor and around the corner to the bathroom, stopping outside the door. Now that he was up and about and his synapses were zipping and zapping, he was beginning to wonder exactly what Ford had done to Rose. There were, he decided, some fairly obvious choices. "Rose," he began gently, "if Ford's been making unwelcome advances, or a nuisance of himself in any way. . . "

"Yeah, he's been a nuisance all right," Rose said, "but not how you mean."

"Oh," Arthur said. He reflected. "Is he singing again? Fifteen years on Earth, I suppose he was bound to pick up a few things. Shame it had to be Ging Gang Goolie, though."

"Nope!" Rose said. She knocked on the door so loudly that Arthur would've said that he heard the ship murmur its displeasure in response, if saying so wouldn't have been a lot like saying he'd just decided to go off his head.

There was no reply from inside. Translating this silence into full permission to enter, Rose opened the door.

It really was a grand bathroom, all gleaming tile and pointless spaciousness. Ford was sprawled across the shiny floor on his stomach, his towel in place as a pillow, snoring happily and completely unaware that he was robbing Arthur once again of participation in the self-same act, albeit indirectly this time. If, somewhere in the galaxy, there was a museum showcasing the myriad unfairnesses of life, Arthur Dent felt that he deserved his own exhibition. This particular moment might get trimmed in favour of some other, more visually arresting one, but in spirit, it certainly had its place.

"Wake up," Rose commanded, to Arthur's distinct satisfaction.

Ford, who had a bit of a history of not doing anything anyone told him to do, didn't.

Rose kicked him in the vicinity of the stomach. Not at all hard, but Arthur got the feeling she wouldn't mind stepping it up if needed for results. Ford responded to this somewhat violent act by curling his body around her foot, like a toddler who'd been given a favourite toy.

Rose disentangled her foot and made ready for a second approach.

"Rose," Arthur said quickly, because whatever else Ford was, he was neither more nor less than Arthur's best friend in the universe, "what did Ford do?"

"This," she said, pulling something small and black out of the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. "I found it under his chair in the kitchen." She bent down and waved the thing in Ford's face.

"What is it?"

"A voice recorder."

"A voice recorder?" Arthur squinted at it, wondering how she could tell. It was smooth and sleek and there weren't any red buttons marked 'REC'. Come to that, there didn't appear to be any buttons at all.

"Yep!" Rose displayed a nerve-wracking number of teeth.

"Well," Arthur placated, even though an unwelcome thought had already crossed his mind, leaving a trail of muddy footprints, "maybe it just fell out of his bag. God knows what all he carries around in there."

"Nice try," said Rose. There was a squashy sort of thud as her foot made second contact. "It was on."

"Are you sure?" Arthur reached a hand out to it, but he hadn't even come close to touching it when a voice came blaring out. _His_ voice. _"You grew up in a wasteland?"_ it asked.

"Yeah," Rose said loudly, almost drowning out Ford's voice it went on about the wonders of Betelguese Five in response. "I'm sure."

"Ah," Arthur said, as the thought that had dropped in earlier turned on the telly, put its dirty feet up on the sofa, and generally made itself at home. Meanwhile, on the recorder, the Earth's destruction was rudely mimicked. Arthur winced. "Could you -"

Rose waved a hand at the device, and there was silence. Echoey, glarey silence. The kind of silence, in fact, which often followed when the female of the species arrived home to discover just what the male and his guests had done to the lounge in her absence.

Arthur dusted off a time-honoured male coping strategy. "Not the most practical of designs, is it?" he diverted.

"No," Rose said. "Lot more space-age than anything the Doctor's got, though." She shoved the recorder back in her pocket, folded her arms, and generally lent support to the theory that many time-honoured male coping strategies are in fact bollocks. "Your friend's very clever, isn't he?"

Arthur wished she wouldn't keep calling Ford his friend in that tone of voice. It made him doubt the wisdom of continuing to claim him. "I don't know," Arthur said carefully, "he thinks he is."

"He set up the whole night, yeah? He got out the drink. He kept pouring. He brought up dead planets and all."

Arthur couldn't disagree. "Look -" and he stopped, eyes on the alien sprawled across the floor. "Let's talk over there." He went over to the sinks, and Rose followed, jumping up to sit on the counter. "Ford somehow got it in his head that the Doctor's a mythological being or some such," Arthur continued quietly. "And he's all hung up on finding out anything he can, because. . . ." Arthur realised that he didn't particularly want to finish that sentence, so he didn't. He was rapidly gaining the impression that when it came to people messing the Doctor about, Rose might not really be all _that_ opposed to the opening of airlocks, or police box doors, or whatever the case might be.

"Because?" Rose prompted.

"Now it's nothing to get worked up about. . . ."

"Oh, I'm not worked up." Her not-worked-up voice was deeper than her normal voice, and did funny things to the hairs on the back of Arthur's neck.

Swallowing, Arthur said, "You see, if Ford's in this much of a state, I don't think he'll remember anything from tonight anyway."

Rose looked at him in a way that suggested Arthur would do well to continue.

"I bet that's why he set the recorder, because he knew he wouldn't be able rely on his brain."

Rose hopped down off the counter and stood quite close to - actually, it was impossible not to notice, within kicking range of - Arthur. "Spill it," she said. _"Now."_

Arthur spilt. "Ford works for a sort of galactic travel guide," he said. "And if he's right about the Doctor, he thinks he can fix up the entry on Time Lords and make himself some cash."

"A travel guide. He's going to put the Doctor in a travel guide."

Arthur didn't like to say yes, so he went with a nod.

"He said Time Lord?"

Again, Arthur nodded.

Rose fell silent, looking down and pulling at the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Arthur recognised the signs of being badly worried because he so often was himself. "Okay," she said, after a moment, "okay, I'm gonna tell you something, but you've got to promise you won't tell him."

"I promise."

Rose gave Arthur a little smile. It did funny things to his body temperature. "He's got it right, your friend," she said. "The Doctor's people are mythological 'cause he's the only one left. There was a war, and his planet was destroyed, and now he's the only one."

"It's funny," Arthur said, "the more I see of the universe, the more surprised I am that there are any planets left at all."

"So I don't want your friend to go round telling the universe he's met a Time Lord," Rose said. "And I don't want him bothering the Doctor to find what out he is."

"Is it a secret? That he's the only Time Lord?" Arthur asked. He'd met aliens with secrets before. And he'd seen what aliens with secrets were prepared to do to keep their secrets secret. Go nuclear, for example.

"No. . . I don't think so, anyway. . . It's just, he reminds himself enough. He doesn't need any help."

"Leave it to me," Arthur said, suddenly certain that he would fix this for her, despite not having the first clue how he might go about it. "I'll sort Ford out. It'll be fine."

Rose's smile was one of the prettiest sights he'd seen in the galaxy.

_vi. come together_

In an infinite universe, teeming with life of every shape, size, and flavour, cross-cultural -

Hang about, strike that.

In a universe that is in all likelihood most probably infinite, since no-one's ever got to the end of it, there's a lot more disused space than anything else. There's quite a lot of life, too, and it is indeed varied, but anyone with a bit of a grip of the mathematics of the situation can tell you that, proportionally speaking, teeming doesn't come into it.

More accurately, therefore (but less eloquently, and with less of a sense of flow), in a place that's really big and has a lot of things inhabiting it, cross-cultural misunderstandings are the rule of the day. Sometimes they can be avoided with quick feet and a little luck - but only sometimes.

Bop around the galaxy long enough, and, even if you've got the right reference material by your side, they'll happen so often you won't even bother to blink. You'll save your eyelids' energy for the clashes, the skirmishes, and the all-out my-battle-fleet's-bigger-than-your-battle-fleet wars.

So when Ford Prefect woke up on the floor of the Time Lord's loo next to a puddle of sick, he didn't do what Arthur Dent would have done, i.e., experience a sudden flashback to the one and only time he'd kept his sister's cat while she'd gone on holiday. Prominently figured in this memory would have been trails of sick, a boot, a furry rear end, and an open door. Frightening parallels would have been drawn, but only to a point, because he would have felt quite sure that the Doctor wouldn't immediately regret kicking them out and spend hour after hour scouring the universe to find them.

But Ford Prefect was not Arthur Dent, and so he opened his eyes, smiled in the general direction of the human sitting nearby, and said, "Great night, hey?"

"If you say so," Arthur said frostily.

"I think I just did." Ford continued smiling. He didn't actually _remember_ a great deal of the night before, which was mostly why he was so firmly convinced that it had been excellent.

"He's not a Time Lord," Arthur said. A thrill ran through him, a lovely, dual-layered, malicious thrill, borne both of flagrantly lying and of making Ford's balloon go pop.

Except it didn't. Ford waved the words lazily away.

Arthur jabbed again. "He's not."

"He is."

"He's _not_."

"Tell me, Arthur, how long did we know each other on Earth?"

"Five years." Arthur thought back on them longingly. "Five nice, mundane years."

"And how many times over the course of those five mundane years did you suspect I was anything but a human?"

"You were an _actor_, you said," Arthur pointed out. "Pardon me for finding that explained rather a lot."

Ford sighed, because he'd read the _Sun_ - no place better for news of green flying saucers - and Arthur had a point. "All right, go ahead, tell me why you're so sure he's not a Time Lord."

"Because after you two drank yourself silly, Rose told me so."

"Oh yeah? And what exactly did she say?"

Arthur had had time to think on this while Ford was snoring. "She said that when the Vogons came, the Doctor was out on the street, and he jumped into a call box for a place to hide. He was gobsmacked to find out it was a spaceship, as you would be, but decided that was probably a good thing at that point. So he went out and pulled the first person he saw inside as well. That was Rose."

"And you're expecting me to believe that a human, facing the destruction of his planet, with only seconds to spare, managed to fly a TARDIS?"

Arthur shrugged.

"A Type 40 _does_ come with the H.A.D.S. standard," Ford said.

Arthur blinked. Had Ford just come to agree with his version of events, or proven incontrovertibly that they were a load of tosh?

By this point in the friendship, Ford knew what bafflement and uncertainty looked like on the face of Arthur Dent. "Hostile Action Displacement System," he said. "It's a relocation device. The ship protects itself against attacks by dematerializing from wherever the danger is and rematerializing somewhere safe. I'm not sure just how large a spatial jump is possible, though. . . ."

"But in a situation like this one," Arthur pointed out, rallying.

"Yes, that's true. The TARDIS would do everything it could to get off that planet. But all the same. . . I've met plenty of your lot over the last fifteen years, and that Doctor -"

"Ford," Arthur interrupted this dangerous path of thought, "have you _listened_ to the man speak? That's not coming from the Babel fish. And you don't just pick that up on a visit or two. That takes a _lifetime_."

Ford sagged, suddenly depressed in a way that waking up soiled on the floor of a toilet would've done for most people.

"Bugger," he said, except he didn't, but it's important to remember that raising the rating invariably means shrinking the audience. So the small European country actually referenced by Ford Prefect shall remain nameless.

* * *

In a universe that's really big and all that, very few cross-cultural misunderstandings ever arise because person from Culture A has been caught messing about behind the wheel of the personal transport of person from Culture B. This is because there are very few societies in which such behaviour is met with anything like approval in the first place, so most persons from Culture A cannot manage to actually claim cultural imperative with a straight face when caught messing about.

Ford Prefect had not been brought up in one of those rare societies where throwing yourself into the driver's seat of someone else's vehicle is considered a sign of the greatest respect. But Ford Prefect also had never let matters of etiquette stand between him and a lift - that was part of the definition of the word 'hitchhiker,' when last he'd checked. Anyway, all he was going to do was send out a short sub-etha message. It wasn't like he was going to fiddle with the man's radio.

Ford's eyes were gleaming as he approached the console, because he knew absolutely and beyond a doubt that this was a TARDIS, whatever species its current pilot happened to belong to. His fingers were twitching with the desire to press all of the knobs and buttons and interestingly-shaped levers.

Arthur, no part of him gleaming, several parts of him twitching, followed.

"Ford, is this really a good idea? Never mind, I'm wasting my breath, aren't I? And I really should be conserving it, considering I'm going to need all this oxygen and then some when we get booted out the door. I hope you find the time out there before we suffocate and die to think, 'It was all my fault.'"

"Arthur, calm down. Be hoopy. If a human can find his away around this ship, then I'm not going to have any problems."

"Do they all have suicidal levels of self-esteem where you come from?"

"All I'm going to do is send out a signal, just like tooting a horn. Easy as cake. In fact," Ford laughed, "look! It's shaped like a horn!"

"Pie," Arthur said.

"What?" Ford said. Then he squeezed the rubber horn-shaped bit, and everything quietly went nuts.

Green and gold faded into white - except they didn't, they didn't do anything so kind to the eyes as fade.

High, arching, timeless walls morphed into the cutting edge of Damogran interior design - except they didn't, they didn't even move over for it.

Krill swarmed by, bioluminescently.

A coconut dropped from a tree, missing Arthur's head by inches.

A llama asked him if he had ever truly considered the advantages of double-glazing.

A man with two heads said, "Hey, Ford, how's it shaking? Still got Monkeyman, I see."

That last bit was the bit Arthur really could have done without.

"And who's the nose?" There were far more people in the room than there had been just a few seconds before. Some had come from the same place as the krill and the llama, while others had rushed in from other parts of the TARDIS. One of the speaker's hands waved at the Doctor, who had come to a halt beside an ice floe and didn't look at all happy about it. "And who's the doll?" Another hand waved at Rose, a few steps behind.

"I've got a question meself," the Doctor said. Arthur might have decided to strategically reposition himself behind the coconut tree, but it had thoughtlessly vanished. He began sidling towards Rose instead. "It's a two-parter. Who are you, and what have you done to my ship?"

"I wish I could say I was surprised," a metallic voice intoned, "but I can't. Depressing, isn't it."

"Listen, the righteous indignation's terrific, amazingly terrific, you really sell it, but it's kind of a waste, yeah?" Zaphod said. "Seeing how you know who I am."

"No," said the Doctor, "I don't."

"Sure you do. Go on," Zaphod smoothed back the hair on one head and angled the other in profile, "guess."

"_No_," the Doctor said.

While this particular non-cross-cultural misunderstanding was busy devolving into a clash, the person who had brought it about was busy saying nothing. This was because he was too occupied with feeling annoyed. He had lost time, the chance of a pay rise, and the possibility of a really thrilling holiday, not to mention the opportunity to make an introduction that would have knocked Zaphod's socks off, all because the Doctor didn't have the decency to be a Time Lord. The fact that Zaphod did not seem to somehow be overcome by the urge to remove his socks regardless also rankled.

Therefore when Ford did finally speak, it was not with words chosen for their ability to soothe or placate or bring peace to two opposing factions. "Zaphod," he said, "maybe it's time you nicked something else, got yourself on the news again. Your constituents don't even recognise you anymore."

"Hey, didn't you see the latest _Starbright_ magazine?" Zaphod asked. One of his heads preened. "You're only looking at the most enigmatic, unpredictable, and generally incredibly thrilling leader of the year."

Rose looked at Arthur. "Most thrilling leader of the year? Who is this bloke?" she asked in an undertone.

"President of the Galaxy, so they tell me," Arthur said.

"What, seriously?"

"Apparently. Do you remember how sometimes, back on Earth, you'd have a day where one thing after another went wrong and you'd think, 'has the entire universe gone mad?'"

"Yeah."

"Well, it seems to have gone some time ago," Arthur said.

There was a sad, weary sound, like audible open-air oxidation. "They didn't even bother to ask you, did they? 'Course they didn't. People. Can't live with them, that's what I always say."

"Funny," the Doctor said, taking three strides forward and into the space occupied by Zaphod, Ford, and Trillian, leading Arthur to congratulate himself on his earlier decision in regard to sidling, "I thought I asked a question."

"Look, man, I'm just here picking up a friend. Your ship's just a place to park." Zaphod craned his necks around. "And hey, I didn't know we could do it like this. Talk about style! Trillian baby, did you know?"

"Oh," Trillian said, her eyes fixed on the Doctor, "I'm sure there were odds."

"I'd appreciate if you'd _un_park it," the Doctor said, all barely-constrained alien - or to Ford's mind, Northern - rage.

Arthur looked round at everyone's faces. As far as he could tell, the humans were the only ones reading the emotional temperature of the room correctly. As usual, the aliens were getting kelvin readings off a Celsius thermometer.

"Now listen, is that any way to speak to your President? Maybe I want to take a look around. Yeah. I'm thinking this is a State visit, all of a sudden."

At his most casual, Zaphod strolled over to the console, presumably, Arthur thought, to see if he could see his face in it. Trillian and Eddie the computer did most of the flying of the Heart of Gold, as far as he'd noticed. Zaphod did most of the lounging and getting in the way.

"Well, if you want to bring _that_ into it. I wouldn't, but it's your own lookout, I'm sure. It'll all end in tears if you ask me, but of course you didn't. Nobody ever does."

"Hey, Marvin," Zaphod said, "shut up, will you? No-one's listening."

"That's what you think," Marvin muttered, twin points of rebellious light flaring in his eyesockets.

The Doctor, Arthur noticed, was grinning. In the normal way of things this would mean that all was well and he and the other humans could relax, but the Doctor's grins were a lot of things, and normal wasn't one of them.

"Zaphod Beeblebrox! Ha_ha_!" The Doctor clapped his hands together. "They elected you President, you ran off in a ship that wasn't yours, and never did a day's worth of governing."

That sounded bizarrely like approval. Hoping it wouldn't turn out to be a mistake, Arthur relaxed a fraction.

"See? You're not as ignorant as you think," said Zaphod.

Blast, thought Arthur, definitely a mistake.

But the Doctor either didn't hear Zaphod's bit of rudeness, or he was too wrapped up in being delighted to give a toss. "Rose, this is Zaphod Beeblebrox! Come say hello."

Rose went, bouncing a little as she landed at the Doctor's side. "Mr. President," she said, her voice low and serious, her eyes dancing.

Zaphod aimed double expressions of charm and cool in Rose's direction and leaned back with Presidential hipness against the TARDIS console. "You got it, babe. The one and only. Cooler than a thousand frozen moons, and way more fun to be on."

Rose made a little strangled sound. "Pleased to meet ya," she managed.

"Tell me about it," Zaphod said. One of his heads began looking around at what other parts of him were propped on. "Hey, this is some ship you've got here."

"Isn't it?" If the compilers of the _Ultra-Complete Maximegalon Dictionary_ had been present and inclined to support their text with audio examples, those two words as spoken by the Doctor would have been snapped up for the entry on 'pride.'

"Yeah, maybe you missed it, but organic travel's kinda out these days. You should dump this thing, get yourself a nice star cruiser. One with a quark drive."

The temperature plummeted so far and so fast that even the aliens felt like shivering. That's not just a metaphor, either. The room really was suddenly quite chilly.

"Can't say that surprised me, either," Marvin said, shaking his head with an exaggerated, grinding slowness. "And don't waste any time waiting for an apology. You'll just be disappointed."

Arthur, who hadn't been shot at, forced to listen to poetry, subjected to explosions, or ridiculed whilst on board (Zaphod's Monkeyman comment aside), and who had been given a very nice meal as well as a place to sleep (even if he had barely been able to take advantage of it), took a decisive step forward. "This," he said, "is without a doubt the best spaceship I've ever been on."

"Yeah, well, like you know," said Zaphod. "Ford, are you ready to go?"

"Ready," Ford said, with feeling.

"Apeface? Are you coming or staying?"

Arthur fantasized for a moment about staying. About talking to Rose every day, eating Earth food every night, retiring to that nice soft bed afterwards and getting in some proper sleep (or possibly, depending how those chats with Rose went, even something else that began with a 's'), and maybe, just maybe, having a cup of tea.

Then he looked at Rose, and the Doctor, who were standing so close together that looking at one automatically meant looking at the other. He looked at Trillian, who was standing similarly close to Zaphod. Arthur sighed. "Yes," he said, "I'm coming."

"Don't go yet."

"What?" said Zaphod.

"What?" said Ford.

"I _said_, don't go yet." And if those responsible for that massive dictionary had wished to make it even _more_ ultra-ly complete by expanding into phrases, idioms, and expressions, as well as another fleet of storage trucks, video footage of the Doctor's subsequent behaviour would have proven useful as an example of the classic Earth saying, 'do as I say, not as I do.'

"Okay, honey," Zaphod said to Trillian, the second the Doctor was out of the room, "let's blow this joint."

"No."

"_What_?"

"We parked our ship right through the middle of his and didn't even hail him first! If he wants us to wait, it's the least we can do."

Zaphod glared, then went straight back to lounging, as if he'd been planning to do some more of that all along.

"Look at you!" Rose said, coming over and hitting Arthur lightly on the arm. "Don't reckon you could've put that any better."

Arthur was too busy looking behind her, at the door the Doctor had exited by. "What's he going to do? Why doesn't he want us to leave? Never mind," he said, realising that Zaphod could decide to go ahead and take off at any minute, "it may be rude of me, but would you mind if I asked where the two of you are going?"

Maybe it was time he started being a little more astrally-minded. Started paying attention to exactly which planets they were visiting, and which Galactic sectors they were endangering their lives in. Now that he had a friend out there, somewhere. . . .

"Oh, we've got some paperwork to do. Should be pretty dull. And after that," Rose shrugged, "there's no telling 'til we get there." She glanced back over her shoulder, at the doorway, then stepped closer. "Listen, Arthur, you make them take you back home sometime," she said. "Not - not right now. Later. Sometime later. But be sure to get them to take you. You'll feel better if you do, I promise."

She smiled at him, one last, blinding, warming smile, and if Arthur Dent was someone else he might have said 'I do already,' and kissed her goodbye.

The Doctor reappeared a moment later, while Arthur was busy shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, stood directly in front of him, and smiled. Arthur jumped a little, which was a perfectly natural response to being the focus of that attention, and stepped an instinctive step away from Rose.

. . . who was beaming, he noticed, and then he noticed the brown paper bag in the alien's hands, and then Arthur Dent's knees went weak.

"Got something for you," the Doctor said. "You're a man of good taste. Think you'll appreciate it."

Arthur reached for the bag in a moment that was terribly long and fraught with the possibility of the ships separating before his fingers made contact, leaving them grasping empty air in a pose suited perfectly for a science-fiction programme (and useful to some in the publishing trade, perhaps, as an illustration of the word 'cliche').

But the moment came to its end, and there it was: the bag, in his hands. It was light, it contained something with hard pointy corners, it gently exuded the most perfect, delicate aroma - Arthur could barely bring himself to look inside, but he did, and -

Little boxes! Little boxes of the sort that tea came in!

The last thing Arthur Dent felt as the gold of the TARDIS faded away was the warmth of Rose's lips on his cheek; the last thing he thought was that the winged shop-creature had actually got it right: it _had_ been a nice day, and he _would_ enjoy the slaking of his thirst. That was a very safe thing to say.

Now _that's_ how to use the word 'safe.'

* * *

_The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ has something to say on the subject of chance meetings.

_They happen,_ it says. _Even though the universe is most probably infinite and the number of people in it is staggeringly large and the number of places they could bump into each other isn't what you'd call small, they happen. Sooner or later you'll be in a restaurant on a moon on the other side of Alfirk, and you'll go to use the toilet and run into someone who knows your mother in the little hall by the pay telephones._

_This will make some of you over-excited, and prone to sitting up nights talking about probability and fate the interconnectedness of things. The rest of you will shrug and think, _Well, that was weird.

_If you're not good with weird, you're probably better off staying home and giving this book to someone who is. Your mum'll be glad to have you._

_If you _are_ good with weird, then you are going to _love_ this galaxy._


End file.
